Thursday, March 20, 2014

April No-Spend Month

So we're doing it again! Another no spending month! We had amazing success with January but in February and now March we've fallen immediately back into our old habits. February's spending was right back up to average and March is already so much higher than average (spending $800 on new tires for a car will do that). We'd like to get some ground underneath us in terms of savings and spending so it seemed doing another no spending month would be good.

The parameters are the same-no spending on anything except groceries and mandatory bills (mortgage, lights, etc.) The biggest difference is I'm allowing us $100 cash each week for groceries and anything necessary that's unforeseen. We absolutely want a successful month but we also don't want to feel completely deprived (so if John wants to take the kiddos to a movie-which at the cheapie theater is less than $10 for all the kids and him-we want to be able to do that.) So we want a little wiggle room. We're also allowing us $100 for a date. We won't come close to spending that much but we want that buffer. Our babysitter sometimes costs us close to $50 and once you throw in dinner and an activity we're right at $100. So we want to be able to go out but again, reigning in any extra spending.

We're going to start as soon as the current Discover bill ends, which is April 7th. Hopefully we can see just as much success with April as we did with January.